If you want something to worry about
This is meant for a general audience, but please take it personally. This is for you. Specifically. You are not going to get Ebola. You. You specifically.
Ebola is extremely hard to transmit. The World Health Organization explains:
It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts. Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.
Ebola then spreads through human-to-human transmission via direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and with surfaces and materials (e.g. bedding, clothing) contaminated with these fluids.
Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.
Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola.
People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids, including semen and breast milk, contain the virus. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.
The
Centers for Disease Control explain:
Can Ebola spread by coughing? By sneezing?
Unlike respiratory illnesses like measles or chickenpox, which can be transmitted by virus particles that remain suspended in the air after an infected person coughs or sneezes, Ebola is transmitted by direct contact with body fluids of a person who has symptoms of Ebola disease. Although coughing and sneezing are not common symptoms of Ebola, if a symptomatic patient with Ebola coughs or sneezes on someone, and saliva or mucus come into contact with that person’s eyes, nose or mouth, these fluids may transmit the disease.
What does “direct contact” mean?
Direct contact means that body fluids (blood, saliva, mucus, vomit, urine, or feces) from an infected person (alive or dead) have touched someone’s eyes, nose, or mouth or an open cut, wound, or abrasion.
For perspective, I’ll add
a particularly salient comment from another thread:
The man from Liberia sat in a hospital waiting room for hours while showing significant symptoms, 3 days or so into the illness, was examined by multiple doctors, taken for CT scans, etc, and yet infected no one at that time, not even his family members who were living with him or his partner who may still have been sleeping in the same bed with him. (Those latter are not out of the clear yet, but would have been sick by now if infected that early on.)
For even more perspective, the
CDC says that of the current outbreak in West Africa, there have been 8400 confirmed cases and 4033 deaths. Each individual case and each individual death is horrible, but this is a region with ragged health care systems, little infrastructure, and poor education systems. If the disease were highly communicable, the numbers already would be exponentially higher.
For even more perspective, some 30,000 people are killed by automobiles in the United States each year, although the number is dropping. Some 30,000 additional people are killed by guns each year in the United States, and the number is rising.
For even more perspective, some 27,000 additional people are killed by unintentional falls each year in the United States. Some 36,000 additional people die from unintentional poisoning each year in the United States. More than 50,000 people are killed by influenza each year in the United States.
Get a flu shot. Wear seatbelts and don’t drink and drive. And don’t worry about things that do not endanger you. Such as Ebola. Stress is unhealthy.